Is Baldness Making A History With Electrical Technology?

Few things on earth strike fear into the hearts of men more profoundly than hair loss. But reversing baldness could someday be as easy as wearing a hat, thanks to a noninvasive, low-cost hair-growth-stimulating technology developed by engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Small devices called nanogenerators passively gather energy from day-to-day movements and then transmit low-frequency pulses of electricity to the skin. That gentle electric stimulation causes dormant follicles to “wake up.”

Because the electric pulses are incredibly gentle and don’t penetrate any deeper than the very outermost layers of the scalp, the devices don’t seem to cause any unpleasant side effects. That’s a marked advantage over other baldness treatments, like the medicine Propecia, which carries risks of sexual dysfunction, depression and anxiety.

This technology would be a very practical solution to hair regeneration.

Reference: Yao G, Jiang D, Li J, et al. Self-Activated Electrical Stimulation for Effective Hair Regeneration via a Wearable Omnidirectional Pulse Generator. ACS Nano. 2019;13(11):12345-12356. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.9b03912

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